Caroline

Tags

1920s, girl, illustration, portrait

I sometimes use my friends’ Facebook pics for inspiration

Calypso

Tags

calypso, day, deceiving, digital, flowers, girl, hair, her, illustration, in, innocent, nymph, orchids, painting, photoshop, portrait, sunny

So here is what I managed to put together in the spare hours. It started as practice for painting skin and I was driven by the vision of a girl wearing orchids in her hair. Well, that felt a bit boring and I decided to spice it up, make her into a innocent looking temptress. This is how Calypso took shape, named after the nymph that kept Odysseus captive on her island. Strange how our pieces/characters begin to have a life of their own after a while.

Painting skin in Photoshop

Tags

beginner, brushes, color, painting, palette, photoshop, portrait, skin, swatches, texture, tutorials

The effect of a massive amount of reference available ends up making me overwhelmed. And by the time I am starting something, I almost give up trying to learn from others and just do it on my own. Well, that’s wrong. I guess students weren’t hanging out in Rembrandt’s workshop for nothing. You need to learn from the masters. And while the digital world and techniques may allow you to learn a lot without even leaving the house…I guess you should find your masters. I am trying now to perfect my portrait painting skills. And here are some pretty neat things I found:

Lauren has a longer tutorial that I found to be less amateur than a lot of things on deviantart.

This is from brazilian artist Amelia Woo. Click the picture to check out her tutorial. I prefer going a different way, but I think I will steal a bit from here too. I like that her palette is going to some crazy hues like blue, which I know is usually a good idea, but I tend to be too chicken to try. 

This is from a website I just discovered through deviantArt. It is a group of artists under the name of ConceptCookie. Even though most of their best resources come for a paid membership, I did find some useful free images (like closeups of how to paint face details). Actually considering to try out their membership. Here, it was useful to realize you can add details also with a more concentrated speckled brush (first one) 

I would follow this one only to pick some swatches and maybe the texturing part. I detest using the Smudge tool for skin and think it’s the amateur way out.  

A pretty and inspiring character

Tags

altman, character, development, digital, ginger, hair, inspiration, painting, photoshop, portrait, red, suburgatory, tessa

I seem to be addicted to shows that only a minority of people likes. I am almost condemned to never see a proper ending to a show I like. However, I take as much as I can get from them. By that I mean a few laughs, maybe a life lesson hidden between lines by a team of writers behind the pretty characters, and finally, the inspiration that comes with watching an awesome character live their life. It comes from that amazing and rare balance between the actor, their looks (not necessarily picture perfect) and the great writing. One of those characters for me was Tessa Altman from Suburgatory. I hope the show gets renewed.

So there it is, I was compelled to turn her into brushstrokes 🙂